


you're so cold.

by Lo Turner-Kane (doujinbag)



Category: The Strokes
Genre: Angst, Drabble Collection, Julian is just really really bad at fucking coping, M/M, Post-Break Up, trigger warnings stated in the notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 21:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5064685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doujinbag/pseuds/Lo%20Turner-Kane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick broke up with Julian.</p>
<p>Julian's lost his grip on himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're so cold.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a series of drabbles pertaining to one plot idea. Idk. Dumb shit.
> 
> I'm gonna say it right now, I don't like the way I wrote the ending, but I'm just really bad at writing endings to shit. Forgive me for how weak it is. Ick.
> 
> Trigger warnings for self harm, drug use, and an alluded-to suicide.
> 
> {title taken from Juicebox.}

Julian wasn’t great at dealing with breakups. Similarly, he was not great at carrying on healthy relationships, so these two dilemmas tended to go hand in hand.

When he met Nick, he thought he could finally change the latter issue. He finally had a reason to sober up, to enjoy life, to actually be afraid of losing someone.

Now that Nick was gone, Julian simply couldn’t find a reason for anything anymore.

 

///

 

His sobriety was the first thing to go.

Two years now, he’d been completely sober. As Nick always reminded him, fucking whilst drunk was just as bad as fucking with the lights off. It made him feel shameful.

“Fuck your shame,” Julian muttered under his breath the first time he picked up a beer bottle again. The only shame that existed now lay on his shoulders.

 

///

 

The lines in the middle of the street weren’t yellow anymore. The city painted white over them at just the same time that Julian began to find comfort in his own white lines.

White lines on his arms, picked open to turn red again.

White lines on his coffee table, looking like a sugar spill had just taken place.

Both kinds of lines formed from the same piece of metal, nice and shiny save for the dried blood flaking off on the sharp edge.

 

///

 

Maybe if he loved Nick better, he would’ve stayed. If he paid him more attention, stopped smoking when Nick wanted to, listened to Nick’s pleas of, “Jules, you really need to fucking sleep,” he wouldn’t be alone.

If he’d done anything right for once, he’d still have him. He’d be cradling his lover in his arms instead of another bottle of tequila.

 

///

 

Nick was faring much better over the entire thing. Gave up smoking on his own, drank small amounts of beer without feeling guilty for Julian’s sake. Now, he even had Fabrizio’s hand to hold. It was almost as if he could completely forget about all he and Julian had been through.

Good for him.

 

///

 

Julian Casablancas was dancing with the goddamn devil and he couldn’t find a single fuck to give. On every day of the week that ended in “y”, he found himself with some sort of drug in his system. The girls and guys he brought home from coke-infested nightclubs never stayed long enough to see his nasty hangover the next morning, which was better for their sake.

Sometimes, when he was still high but not quite high enough to forget, he could remember what it felt like when Nick was his only addiction.

Withdrawal is a bitch.

 

///

 

The first time he wound up in the hospital, Nikolai and Albert came to see him the next day. They were full of shaking heads and disappointed sighs and “fuck, Jules,” but neither one of them could bring themselves to tell Julian to own up to his mistakes.

He was too far gone to listen, anyways.

 

///

 

Nick’s phone rang at four in the morning the second time Julian fucked himself up beyond repair. He was much too tired to understand all that Nikolai was saying, but he caught a few key words in the mix.

Julian. Emergency. Julian. Sorry. Julian. Overdose.

Julian. Julian. Julian.

Coma.

The phone fell from Nick’s hand before he had a chance to muffle his scream.

 

///

 

Julian looked dead as he lay on the stale hospital sheets. Hooked up to life support, it was ironic to say he was even still alive.

Nick refused to let go of Julian’s hand the first five hours he was at the hospital. (He only got up because he really couldn’t hold in his piss any longer.)

Nick cried and begged and pleaded with every god he didn’t believe in to save Julian, to wake him up soon.

There’s really no use in praying to things you don’t have faith in.

 

///

 

The second month of Julian’s comatose state, Nick had fallen into a routine. Wake up, go to the hospital, pray he wouldn’t come home to an eviction notice due to unpaid rent, repeat. By now, he’d gotten better with talking to a sleeping man for over twelve hours a day. It didn’t feel so strange anymore, especially with one of the other guys by his side.

The only thing that helped him fall asleep at night was the knowledge that all of Julian’s old dealers were rotting away in a jail cell.

 

///

 

Nick’s relationship with Fab came and went like the sun in the winter sky. It may have been much healthier, much happier than his relationship with Julian, but something in him told him it was for the best.

After all, he never really stopped loving his Jules.

 

///

 

After the sixth month, Nick finally ran out of stories to tell Julian. He could only stand the empty silence for so long before he began to hum quietly.

The song wasn’t even a real song, at least not one he knew of. It didn’t matter. He hummed anyways.

Tears came to his eyes as he quietly pleaded, “Wake up, wake up... Open your eyes and just wake up, Julian, come on... I’m sorry, I’m so sorry...”

He pressed his lips to Julian’s neck in an attempt to kiss him, but the tears began to spill onto Julian’s skin in a salty, distraught mess. He continued apologizing quietly as he wept, and he simply couldn’t breathe.

Not until he felt Julian’s fingers twitch in his hand, anyways.

 

///

 

Sometimes, people die without any last victory. They die in misery, already in a state of living-death, so that death would seem like a paradise for the souls trapped in their wilting bodies.

This was not Julian’s case. Rather, he sprung back to life for an entire week before his death. It was strange, seeing as how he was so damn lively for those seven days that Nick was his again.

Nick didn’t make it to the hospital in time, he didn’t get to see Julian during his final moments. Maybe that was for the best.

Yet, something about the way Julian died felt off. It shouldn’t have happened the way it did. Nothing about it seemed fateful or accidental.

Perhaps it was on purpose.

 

**Author's Note:**

> lol wtf was that
> 
> [tumblr](http://spookymileskane.tumblr.com) / [instagram](http://instagr.am/and.a.smile)


End file.
